Lois Bujold - Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Morozov waved an ImpSec salute at him. “Then I shall consider myself detailed to guard the new Lady Vorpatril from all harm until your return, shall I?”

“Please.” Ivan turned away, turned back. “And feed them. They’ll like that. Nobody’s had breakfast yet.” He started off and stopped again. “But not rat bars.”

“I’ll send my clerk to bring up something from the cafeteria. Ladies, will you come with me? I can offer you coffee or tea in my office.” Morozov gestured the uneasy women away down the corridor, and continued in the tone of a town Vor dame, or possibly Byerly Vorrutyer, at the most gossipy: “And I’m dying to hear all about your wedding, Lady Vorpatril! I’m sure this will come as a delightful surprise to all of Captain Vorpatril’s friends…”

Ivan pushed through the doors and ran. He made sure to make it that special bland run that said, I’m late and in a hurry , and not the wild bolt that said, This building I am fleeing is about to explode , because he didn’t want to spread panic. He had enough panic tamped into his head right now to blow up a battalion. This’ll work this’ll work, this had better work…

He found, thanks be, the admiral’s shuttle still waiting in Dock Six. Desplains and all four of the Horsemen were aboard, fuming with impatience. The shuttle was already moving as Ivan flung himself into the seat where the scowling Desplains pointed and snapped his belts closed.

“We’re off to inspect the flagship New Athens , right?” Ivan wheezed.

“So glad you remembered,” said Desplains, drawing a long breath for what promised to be a classic bolt of scouring sarcasm, but Ivan shook his head.

“Change it to the Kanzian .”

Desplains stopped dead in mid-rant-launch. “What?”

“The Kanzian . Tell the shuttle pilot to dock at the Kanzian .”

Desplains sat back, eyes narrowing. “Why?”

“Because hidden somewhere aboard it—or possibly clamped outside of it—are several cargo pods full of equipment, weapons, and supplies stolen from the Sergyar Fleet Orbital Depot. Which their conveyors are no doubt trying frantically to camouflage right now, in anticipation of our scheduled inspection tomorrow.” Ivan nodded to the inspection team chief, leaning over the aisle to hear this. “Forget the rest, that’s what the Horsemen should look for.”

“How do you know this, Vorpatril?” asked Desplains.

“I had a tip-off from an ImpSec agent.”

“ImpSec didn’t tell me .”

“This was one of their left-hand men, the sort the right hands don’t talk to. Frigging weasels. But he’s known to me. The reasons I’ve been late for work the past few days weren’t just personal ones, sir.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“Very.” IhopeIhopeIhope …

“ImpSec.” Desplains sat back, his scowl transmuting to his thinking-frown, scarcely less alarming. “I suppose you would know.”

“I do in this case, sir.” Adding I’d stake my career on it seemed redundant, since he just had. “But you can’t even hint where you got the tip, sir. There are ImpSec agents still on the ground in the matter who are at high risk till they get clear.”

“Hmm…”

There ensued rumbling and grumbling, but the Horsemen were good; they had the new inspection plan roughed out before the shuttle slid into its docking clamps at the Komarr Fleet orbital station. Next to the Kanzian .

Captain Morozov proved a disappointment to Tej, considering ImpSec’s reputation. He wasn’t in the least scary.

By the time he’d ordered in a gratifyingly substantial lunch, the tale of her and Rish’s escape and subsequent odyssey across three systems was almost told. The first not-too-alarmed flight to Fell Station, and then all their false sense of security blown to shocked bits when their bodyguard was shot; the escape to the Hegen Hub, the weeks turned to months of slipping from station to station around the Hub like some sort of lethal shell game—brief, stressed, frightening periods of motion alternated with long, boring, frightening periods of hiding; the bad news catching up with them in agonizingly slow hammer blows; the gradual relaxation of their months downside on the free planet Pol, almost sure they’d shaken pursuit, till it turned up again. The final flight to Komarr, with their every resource of money, identity, and resolution nearly tapped out. She tried to hold back how their identity shifts had worked, but since the fellow promptly guessed nearly every detail, Tej ended up being frank about all that, as well.

Morozov might not be properly intimidating, but he was something better; he understood . Tej discovered, when he volunteered a few inviting anecdotes of his own during the lulls and hesitations, that some years back he had actually been a junior ImpSec field agent in the Whole. They were all out-of-date tales of amusing misadventures, but Tej began to sense that in the gaps lay some adventures that hadn’t been so amusing, nor misses.

“No one is allowed to become an analyst without field experience,” he explained. “They are not at all the same skill-set, but when one is given the task of interpreting field reports, it’s a source of considerable illumination to have once been the fellow writing them.” He seemed quite content with his headquarters job now, though, and perhaps the holovid of the middle-aged woman with children, tucked almost out of sight on his cluttered desk, suggested why.

As they portioned out sandwiches, teas, and assorted deep-fried vegetables and cheeses around the cubicle, Tej, with editorial interjections from Rish, brought the tale up to the moment with a description of her bewildering wedding at dawn.

“I wish I could have been a witness, too,” said Morozov, his eyes crinkling. “That was quite a quixotic impulse on your, er, bridegroom’s part. Well, faint heart ne’er won fair lady, I suppose.”

“I think it was his admiral calling on his wristcom that finally pushed him…” she swallowed the words, over the edge , and substituted, “into his inspiration. When it wouldn’t stop chiming, he finally took it off and threw it into the refrigerator.”

Morozov choked on a bite of sandwich. But, “Really,” was all he said when he got his breath back.

“Is this Admiral Desplains of Ivan Xav’s a, um, very important admiral?”

“Chief of Operations for the entire Imperial Service? You could say so, but it would be a charming understatement.”

“Oh,” said Tej. “So…Ivan Xav’s not just some sort of military clerk?”

“You could say so.” Morozov’s lips twitched. “But it would be a charming understatement.” Morozov finished his last bite, leaned back in his station chair, and tented his fingertips together. “I should likely explain, I served several years of my apprenticeship in Analysis at ImpSec headquarters in Vorbarr Sultana, back when the legendary Chief Illyan was still running the place.”

Illyan’s, at least, was a name Tej dimly remembered hearing on her father’s lips, more than once. Usually accompanied by swearing. She nodded uncertainly.

“Domestic Affairs was never my department, but one cannot serve long in the capital without acquiring some familiarity with the high Vor scene.”

“Did you know Ivan Xav there?”

“No, we never met in person till the affair of his cousin’s clone brought him into my orbit, some time later.”

And why did that have anything to do with Jackson’s Whole? And which cousin? “Am I—are we—likely to meet his cousin? Or his clone?” She hesitated. “Is this the Cousin Miles he keeps talking about? Is he anyone important?”